Monica and her sister have a garden on the land they have cleared in Mobile right across from our house.

They began working on clearing the land of vines and scrub bushes about two years ago. They do everything basically by hand with a little help from a cousin’s husband who pushes cut logs out of the way with his tractor. The work is sometimes challenging because the vines have roots that have to be dug out of the ground, and during hurricane Frederick in 1979 the land lost a lot of trees so the vines had plenty of opportunity to thrive. At this point the two ladies have cleared about half of the two acres available, giving them plenty of room for a vegetable garden. This is their second year for the garden, and the photo shows the produce for a lunch meal – all of it from the garden. To date they have harvested 195 cucumbers and lots of other vegetables, too, including corn, eggplant, tomatoes, field peas, peppers, lettuce and watermelons as well. They also have three small raised-bed garden plots close to the house and are planting a few fruit trees on part of the cleared land. I wondered whether the cleared area might make a nice baseball field, but they had other ideas and I am not complaining, I can vouch for the produce being quite tasty!